Alabama native Todd Schmidt will begin his role in June at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival

To say Todd Schmidt is a newcomer to the Alabama Shakespeare Festival family isn’t exactly correct.

“I grew up in Vestavia Hills, around Birmingham,” the new ASF executive director said in a call from New Jersey. “I remember going to the Shakespeare Festival in its early days in Anniston as a kid to see it.”

Back then, the ASF was in a high school auditorium without air conditioning, and ran plays for six weeks during summer months.

“The Shakespeare Festival is one of those first places that I saw professional theater, and really helped ignite my interest in theater as a career,” Schmidt said.

Later, Schmidt also visited ASF at its current location in Blount Cultural Park in Montgomery, and said the facility there is spectacular. He’ll officially begin his new position there in June.

“It’s a great honor, and I am thrilled and excited beyond belief to get back South, and to work with the great people and the fantastic board of directors at the Festival,” Schmidt said.

The Alabama Shakespeare Festival is located in Blount Cultural Park in Montgomery.(Photo: Courtesy ASF)

Schmidt said the arts are an incredibly important part of society, and his role as executive director involves helping to meet those needs. “My job is to make sure we are continuing to work with the community on understanding what their needs are,” Schmidt said. “How we can fit into those, and how the Festival can be really opened up to the whole community and be seen as a real big community resource.”

An Auburn graduate who earned his master in fine arts degree from the Goodman School of Drama in Chicago, Schmidt went on to work his way through theaters across the Midwest and East.

For the past eight seasons, he’s been the managing director of the 1,200 seat Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, New Jersey.

“It’s the largest producing theater in the state, primarily known for musicals,” Schmidt said. “A lot of work that we have done in the time I’ve been here the last eight years has been in works that are new musicals that started here. Many have moved to Broadway or on national tours.”

According to a release from ASF, Paper Mill has staged world premieres of “Newsies,” “Honeymoon in Vegas,” “Ever After,” “Bandstand,” “The Honeymooners,” “The Sting” and “A Bronx Tale,” and the U.S. premieres of the 25th anniversary production of “Les Misérables,” “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” and “The Bodyguard.”

When Schmidt officially starts in June, he will be partnering with ASF’s new artistic director Rick Dildine.

“That’s also one of the things that appeal to me about this position is this whole fresh start for the Festival, bringing in a new artistic director and a new executive director,” Schmidt said. “He and I have had just amazingly wonderful creative and productive talks about the future and our hopes and dreams for the Festival going forward.”

“Todd Schmidt has a track record as a dynamic executive leader,” said Dildine in a release announcing Schmidt’s hire. “I am excited to partner with him as we seek to make Alabama Shakespeare Festival a vibrant, transformative theater company where all our communities feel welcomed, engaged, entertained and inspired.”

Schmidt said he and Dildine hope to expand the Festival’s reach into the community and the region, along with working closely with ASF’s board of directors.

“We hope to really create more of a festival atmosphere at times, so that there are some more repertoire things going on,” Schmidt said. “So that people from Birmingham or Gadsden or Mobile or Atlanta or anywhere in the region could come in for a weekend and have more than one thing that they could see. To make it a regional destination.”

Schmidt said he’s been overwhelmed and impressed by all the changes in Montgomery and that he’s looking forward to getting home to Alabama.

“We want to see that place hopping. We want to see it filled with people,” Schmidt said. “We want to see everyone in the community feeling that they’re a part of what’s going on at the Shakespeare Festival.”